1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to the field of data communications and more particularly to electronic message routing in a heterogeneous data communications network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Messaging has become the lifeblood of enterprise infrastructure. In the past, information technologists tolerated poor electronic communications with both customers and suppliers. Presently, though, competitive market pressures have changed driving information technologists to seek messaging solutions that provide a lower cost of ownership while increasing the effectiveness and reliability of their communications network. Specifically, information technologies now recognize the benefits of an Internet standards-based messaging system. In this regard, standards-based messaging systems typically can include native or gateway support for one or more of SMTP, MIME, POP3, IMAP4, LDAP, SNMP, and SSL.
While some messaging system vendors include support for widely used messaging standards, others fail to incorporate support for all relevant standards. Still others fail to completely support application required messaging standards. In such cases, customers must compromise interoperability. In all cases, however, unless a messaging system has been configured to interoperate with all available messaging protocols and data formats, a gateway or connector will be required to translate a message from one data format to another.
The use of a gateway or connector to provide interoperability between disparate messaging systems has been considered deficient in terms of providing native support for multiple messaging standards. Specifically, it has been recognized by those skilled in the art that gateway or connector based support for multiple messaging standards can prove suboptimal in that such systems are considered proprietary and can produce mere marginal scalability and can be expensive. Accordingly, the use of gateways and connectors to process multiple messaging formats and protocols have been limited strictly to electronic mail systems.
Twenty-first century messaging extends far beyond simple electronic mail systems, and incorporates both Internet and conventional fax messaging, voice messaging, video conferencing and the like. Yet, the same interoperability problems exist in twenty-first century messaging which could be identified among simple electronic mail systems. For instance, Internet fax providers utilize disparate format and file types, while video conferencing systems rely upon several known protocols and formats. Similarly, voice mail systems differ generally from vendor to vendor, in both cellular and business telephone systems.
Notably, in the context of fax messaging, it can be advantageous to route a fax not through the PSTN where toll charges can be incurred, but through the Internet where at present no tolls can be incurred. The use of Internet fax routing can be particularly advantageous where a fax is to be broadcast to a destination which broadcast will incur long distance charges. To that end, fax delivery systems have been developed which can algorithmically select an optimal route for a particular fax destination which might include a PSTN segment, an Internet segment or a combination of both PSTN and Internet segments.
Still, the effectiveness of each route can be limited by the route knowledge associated with a specific destination for a particular fax document. In particular, where one fax network cannot provide a cost effective Internet route for a selected destination, another fax network might enjoy a configuration able to provide a cost effective Internet route. Still, as each fax network can process fax transmissions disparately, neither can interoperate with the other and an expensive PSTN route will be required. In this regard, interoperability does not exist between different fax networks.
Similarly, in the context of video conferencing, participants to a particular video conference must utilize end point communications equipment which processes digital video in a like manner, whether the manner is through PICTURETEL, or H.323 means. Different endpoints having disparate mechanisms for processing video and audio imagery cannot interoperate to facilitate a video conferencing session. Analogously, voice mail processed by a cellular phone system cannot easily be processed in a conventional PBX system disposed within the enterprise. Thus, there exists a long felt unsolved need for a unified messaging architecture able to facilitate the exchange of electronic messages across disparate messaging systems in a seamless manner.